EU Background

The 2020 Climate and Energy Package 
In 2007 the EU made a unilateral commitment to reduce its greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to 20% below 1990 levels. This commitment, together with a 20% renewable energy target for the EU by 2020, was translated into EU legislation through the Climate and Energy Package, which was agreed by Council and Parliament at the end of 2008. 

The package contains a series of measures such as the revision of several directives that are nowadays in force such as the Renewable Energy Directive, the Fuel Quality Directive or the Emission Trading Directive, or the establishment of national targets and a governance system to monitor and assist Member States to reach their national objectives. 

This package was the basis for the EU targets defined in the EU 2020 Strategy, which serves as the general framework for the development of the Union’s policies, specially those related with areas such as research and innovation, energy, environment, climate change or industry.  

Based on these documents, the EU has presented during the last years a series of Communications establishing a framework and roadmap for the development of its policies during the next decades, setting up targets, and ensuring regulatory certainty for investors and a coordinated approach among Member States. Essential documents are the following:

• The Roadmap for moving towards a competitive low carbon economy in 2050. It defines a target of a 80% emissions cut below 1990 levels by 2050 and a series of milestones.   
• The Energy Roadmap 2050 which identifies the challenges poed by delivering the EU’s decarbonisation objectives 
• Transport White Paper, a comprehensive strategy to reach very ambitious goals regarding the decarbonisation of the transport sector for the next decades
• A Policy Framework for climate and energy in the period from 2020 to 2030 establishing a target to reduce EU domestic greenhouse gas emissions by 40% below the 1990 level or to reach at least a 27% share of renewable energy in the final consumption

Use of Renewable Energy Resources
At community level, the target is for renewables to account for 12% of total energy consumption by 2010, as against the 1995 figure of 6%. Bioenergy will play a leading role in doubling the use of renewables. The target is to increase the annual use of bioenergy from 45 Mtoe to 135 Mtoe (of which 230 TWh for power generation) in the EU-15.

Composition and objectives related to bioenergy in EU-15 (Mtoe)

*: The White Paper suggests 18 Mtoe. However, the final energy consumption for transport can be extrapolated to 390 Mtoe/year in 2010 (average yearly growth rate of 1,8% between 1990 and 2002, applied until 2010). 5.75% of 390 Mtoe are approximately 22 Mtoe (924 GJ). 20 Mtoe is taken as the average.

In the “Energy for the future” document, end-use data on electricity and heat production are reported without reference to the technical assumptions regarding current and future conversion efficiencies. The table below presents a likely division of biofuels over the utilisation sectors that could be expected by 2010.

Source: Siemons (2002)

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